al-Raḥmān 55:43-44

Hādhihi jahannamu'llatī yukadhdhibu bihā'l-mujrimūn · Yaṭūfūna baynahā wa bayna ḥamīmin ān

"This is the Hell that the guilty deny · they go round and round between it and scalding water."

The last piece of the sūra's section of punishment, and two verses long.

A demonstrative of nearness. And this does a piece of work in the word order.

Until now the sūra had not spoken of Hell; there had been a flame of fire, a splitting sky, guilty men seized, but the name of Hell had not occurred. Here the name is given — and it is given with a near demonstrative.

Hell is named, that is, not as something recounted at a distance but as something pointed at. A scene has been set up and entered.

And here is one of the tightest internal rings of the sūra.

The verb is from the root ك-ذ-ب — the root of the refrain.

The verb of the question asked thirty-one times comes back here inside a declarative sentence.

And the verb is imperfect: yukadhdhibu — "they deny", "which they keep denying". Even while standing before Hell, the act of denying is recounted in the present.

This is the very technique treated at al-Mursalāt 77/29: there too it was said "go on towards what you used to deny", and the verb carried a form of continuing action.

And the word order here does this: the refrain kept asking "which do you deny?" and gave no answer. The forty-third verse gives one of the answers: this.

I record this as my own reading. That the root is shared and where the two verbs stand in the sūra is data of the text.

Root: ط-و-ف. To turn about a thing, to circle. From the same root come طَوَاف (ṭawāf), طَائِفَة (a party — a group that circulates) and طُوفَان (ṭūfān — the water that encircles).

And the choice of the word is striking. The Qurʾān uses this root in the descriptions of the garden as well (yaṭūfu ʿalayhim — they are waited on, served); and the circling of the Kaʿba is named with this word too.

Here, though, there are two things circled: Hell and scalding water. And the one who circles is not the one who serves but the one who is made to circle.

Word order: بَيْنَهَا وَبَيْنَ — "between it and…". Bayna is repeated twice. The movement is thus not around a place but between two points — a going and returning.

And this sets up a contrast with the twentieth verse of the sūra. There, between two things, there was a barrier and there was no crossing. Here, between two things, there is an unbroken going and returning and no halt.

I record this as my own reading. The bayna structure in the two verses is data of the text.

حَمِيم — root ح-م-م. Heat. Ḥamīm is used in Arabic of two opposite things: very hot water and a close friend. The second sense comes from the metaphor of warmth.

ءَان — root أ-ن-ي. This word was analysed in al-Ghāshiya, and precisely this verse was cited there. What was recorded there:

Āniya, when used of water, means "having reached boiling point". The point, that is, at which heat has come to ripeness. This is a curious working of the language: the word carries in itself no negative, indeed rather a positive core — to come to its proper state. The evil is not in the word but in the thing that comes to its proper state. The "ripening" of water is its becoming undrinkable.

And this verse was cited directly there: "The Qurʾān builds the same idea with another word as well: 'They are made to go round between it and scalding water' (al-Raḥmān 55/44). The ānin there is from the same root."

A note on word order to be added here: both words are indefinite — ḥamīmin ānin, "a scalding water". There is no definiteness. And the indefinite can here do the work of magnification, as was recorded for shaʾn in ʿAbasa.